


Crazy Headbutting Uncle

by madamebadger



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Character Study, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Hope, Mass Effect 3: Citadel, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:59:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1654283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamebadger/pseuds/madamebadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you find family in the most <i>highly</i> unlikely places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crazy Headbutting Uncle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theladyw](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=theladyw).



> Written for a prompt from [theladyw](http://theladyw.tumblr.com/), who asked for "Tali and her favorite head-butt-ey uncle." Which is something I've wanted to write for a while anyway--basically ever since I saw that bit in the DLC! Spans ME1 through post-ME3.
> 
> (You may note that I've been a bit loose with the mapping of gameplay mechanics to storylines, since head sinks sort of showed up mysteriously between ME1 and ME2 somehow and the mechanic of how space guns work is pretty vague and semi-contradictory in general. Just roll with it.)

In all honesty, part of the reason Tali spent so much time in engineering was that the company in the cargo bay unnerved her.

First thing: the weapons. Tali was comfortable with her shotgun and her combat drone, but on the Flotilla nobody went armed, not as a matter of course. Weapons came out on firing ranges and combat simulators, and then were locked away—no quarian had reason to carry a weapon on a Fleet ship, not unless something apocalyptically bad had happened. But here, weaponry was everywhere. Williams spent much of her down time doing maintenance on some gun or other; Vakarian cleaned and adjusted his sniper rifle whenever he wasn’t tinkering with the Mako; and then there was the krogan, who—in addition to putting an edge on his terrifying hunting knife and lavishing care on his own shotgun—was a weapon in and of himself. She wasn’t _afraid_ of them, she could take care of herself, but it made her wary in the same way the ship’s haunting emptiness and silence made her wary.

Today she did her best to ignore them as she found a quiet corner and settled down to hook up a protein paste capsule to her suit intake. Or at least, she _tried_ to, but a rumble from Wrex stopped her: “Quarian.”

“I have a name,” she snapped, glancing up at him.

He grinned, a slow wide expression that showed an impressive array of teeth. Then he tilted his head toward her. “You know how to use that?”

“…Use what?” She could tell that Garrus had glanced up from his work on the Mako to watch, and tensed at the thought that she not only had Wrex to deal with, but had an audience for it.

“The knife,” Wrex said. “The one on your boot.”

“Oh.” She let her hand settle on the hilt of her knife. “Yes.”

“It’s just,” he said, in a drawl so slow it was almost an insult, “a lot of idiots carry a knife thinking it’ll make them look tough, and the first time they fight somebody close-up… the knife gets taken off them and used against them.”

Now Williams was watching, too; Tali could tell without even looking. “I know how to use it,” she said again, which was more or less true. She’d had the armed hand-to-hand training. She’d learned where to stab and where not to stab and most importantly, _when_ to stab.

She had a feeling Wrex wouldn’t be impressed, though.

“All right,” Wrex said. “Come at me, then.”

She stared at him.

His grin tilted. “I’m just sitting here. What are you waiting for?”

“Do I look _completely_ stupid?” Tali asked, after a moment.

She could tell she’d startled him. He began to laugh. “Well, I can’t say you don’t have some sense, quarian. All right. Garrus, come over here.”

The turian’s voice was desert-dry: “What makes you think I want to play, Wrex?”

“You’re sitting there staring like a poleaxed pyjack, you must not have anything else better to do.”

Garrus gave a great gusty sigh, but he put down his rifle and got to his feet. “If I hurt her, it’s not my fault.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Tali said, bristling. Her desire to get out of the conversation with as little annoyance as possible transmuted abruptly into a desire to show these _bosh’tets_ a thing or six.

Wrex eyeballed her, his orange gaze unreadable. All he said, though, was, “All right, show me how you’d come at him with that knife.”

“I wouldn’t,” Tali said, promptly.

“Oh?”

“It’d be foolish to go after someone, but especially a turian, at this range with a knife. He’s taller than me and his arms are longer, and he’s armed. I’d have to get in close somehow to do any good, and without getting shot first. There’s no way it would end well.” She thought about it a moment. “If I had to fight Garrus like this, I’d use a flashbang to distract him, then my shotgun once his attention was divided.”

She heard a bark of laughter from Williams. “You tell ‘em, Tali.”

“Not bad,” Wrex said, voice even. Not quite praise, but not quite as dismissive as before. “When _would_ you use the knife?”

“If his back was turned,” she said. “Or as a surprise attack if he was engaged with someone else. Or if he grappled me first—a lot of people don’t notice a boot knife, so it’s a strike that you get that they aren’t expecting.” She thought about it a moment more, then said, “I’d go in low, at the waist. The skin at the waist is thinner and there are vital organs there.” _That_ had been part of the hand-to-hand training advice. 

“Not bad,” Wrex said again. Garrus rolled his eyes and went back to adjusting his rifle.

Tali, though, stayed put. “Wrex, why are you giving me a hard time? Did I do something to offend you?”

He squinted at her. “I’m not ‘giving you a hard time.’ If I wanted to give you a hard time, I’d just let someone take that knife off you and stab you with it.”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

Wrex rose from his crouch, all two and a third meters of him. “Show me your knife.” Tali hesitated a moment, but—there wasn’t any harm in it, was there? She bent and slid it from its sheath, then handed it hilt-first to Wrex. He held it up, then tilted it so the edge caught the harsh lights of the cargo bay. “Hm. Good craftsmanship.”

“It belonged to my mother. And her mother, before her.”

Wrex flipped it thoughtfully. “Nice balance. Here, Tali.” He handed it back to her, just as she registered that he’d _finally_ called her by name. “Let me show you some ways you can make it useful.”

* * *

There were too many rachni, too many and too _fast_ , with skittery legs and a high-pitched chittering that made every hair stand up on her body. Tali took deep breaths of the chill Noveria air through her nose, willing herself not to panic. A well-time shotgun blast dropped one rachni worker and stalled another, but there was a third and a fourth—Shepard was somewhere ahead taking care of the soldiers, trusting Tali to take care of this, and she _was_ , but she wasn’t sure how long she could keep it up—

—damn it, damn it, _damn it_ —

Her heat sink pinged and she slammed the eject and cursed when it stalled, rolling back to pop it more slowly, but the rachni were pulling in too close. Close was good for how she fought, close wasn’t bad for her the way it would be for Garrus, but there was close and there was _too close_. And they were so small and they scuttled in a way that made her nerves clang and her stomach churn, they scuttled like something from the primordial dark and there were too many of them and they were all around her—

A shockwave of blue knocked the rachni workers back. Immediately after the wash of blue, a roaring red crashed into them. Tali staggered for just a moment and then regained herself as Wrex came back around for another pass, the sheer bulk and power of an adult krogan grinding rachni into the ground. She could hear the crunch of exoskeletons, the squeal of chitin against floor tiles, the noises the rachni made as they died that grated against her back teeth.

Wrex skidded to a stop, the blue glitter of biotics fading around him as he swung his head side to side. His wide-spaced eyes took in the lab, registering that all their opponents were dead (and in some cases, smashed to pulp). Then he looked at Tali, breath leveling. She tensed for a lecture, and winced at the thought that it was well-earned. She shouldn’t have let herself get overwhelmed.

But all he said was, “Give me your shotgun.”

“Wrex,” she began, but he shook his head and held out his hand, and after a moment she gave it to him.

He took it, glanced at her—a glance lacking in any reprobation—and then turned his attention back to the shotgun. “If you put the heat sink in the heel of your hand, like this,” he said, dropping a fresh sink at the base of his palm, “you can pop the spent sink by rocking the bolt lever back like this—it’s a smooth movement, it’s not likely to jam—and then in the same movement you push the new one up and in. It’s a lot faster.” He demonstrated once, slowly, then jettisoned the fresh sink and showed her again, faster. Then he popped it a third time, handed her shotgun and sink, and said, “You try.”

It took a few tries to get the gesture and the positioning right, but soon Tali had the hang of it. It _was_ a lot faster than trying to pop the sink in a hurry and replace it after. “Thanks,” she said.

He shrugged. “Be a mercenary for a few hundred years, you learn a few things.”

As they walked across the chilly lab, toward Shepard, she summoned up the nerve to say, “I thought you were going to chew me out for getting myself swarmed like that.”

“Heh.” Wrex grinned. “It happens.” He touched his fingertips to the prominent scarring at the top of his forehead plate. “Ask me sometime how I got this.”

“Okay,” she said. “I will.”

“But buy me a drink first.”

* * *

It was strange to see Wrex enthroned, although Tali supposed that if anyone had earned it, it was him. Still, it was something of a relief when he leaned forward on the stone armrest and said—in the same dry tones he’d always adopted when he was just a mercenary veteran in the Normandy cargo bay—”So, you’re going out with the kid against the thresher maw?”

“I’m going out with Grunt, yes,” Tali said, and then, amused: “You used to call _me_ ‘kid.’”

“Yeah, well.” Wrex jerked his chin toward where Grunt was getting into it with a couple of Urdnot bravos. “Next to him, you’re an old lady.”

“I’m not sure I like that better.” Tali folded her arms and tilted her head.

Wrex laughed in his slow way, settling back in his stone throne-chair. “Watch yourself out there. Tuchanka’s no picnic.”

“I noticed. Nice homeworld you have here.”

“At least I’ve got one,” he said, and she touched her helmet in recognition of the point scored.

“Any advice?” she asked.

“Don’t get eaten.”

“Thanks, Wrex,” she said, dryly.

Wrex shifted forward, resting his chin in one hand. “You know, I killed a thresher maw on my Rite.”

“Oh? Is that a challenge?”

“Hah!” Wrex laughed and leaned back. “Maybe. Feel free to take it that way, if you want. Don’t tell Grunt, though—I want him to succeed at this, for political reasons.” He said the words ‘political reasons’ as if they were distasteful, something he should spit from his mouth as fast as possible—but still, he said them. “I don’t want him getting his foolish tail killed trying to match me.”

“You don’t mind if I get my foolish, ah, _tail_ killed?”

“I know _you’ve_ got some sense, which is more than I can say for the whelp.” Wrex looked up, toward the distant rocky ceiling. “It’s hard to have any sense at that age. I remember. It was a long, long time ago for me, though.”

“Thanks, Wrex,” Tali said, after a moment.

He grinned, the familiar toothy expression. “Don’t thank me ‘til you see what you’re up against.”

* * *

It was a good party. A really good party, especially for a party in a human’s apartment, because everyone knew humans couldn’t throw a party if their lives depended on it. But Shepard was a miracle, because it was a good party. A really good party. A really, really— 

Tali was barely, fuzzily aware of Wrex stepping into the bathroom. She opened her mouth to tell him about her omni-tattoo, but what came out was, “It has a thresher maw on it.”

Wrex bent down until she could see his eyes close up. His eyes were orange, orange and… round, and… orange, like the sunset on Rannoch. “What does?” he asked.

She frowned. “What does what?”

He sighed. “What has a thresher maw on it?”

“Oh. The. The. My.” Words seemed to have become slippery, sliding away from her—slipping and sliding, all… slippy-like. “You know.”

“I don’t.”

“ _You_ know.”

“Okay, enough sleeping on the bathroom floor, Tali.” He hooked an arm under her and lifted her up. He was strong, Wrex. Her head felt very heavy—someone must have filled her helmet with, with, with something heavy—and she let it wobble towards his shoulder.

“You’re my _favorite_ krogan,” she said.

“Uh huh.” The walls and floor were spinning, so she couldn’t tell where they were going, but it didn’t really matter because Wrex was _so nice_. She wanted to tell him how nice he was, only words, words were hard.

“Really, my _favorite_. Grunt’s, Grunt’s, Grunt’s _fine_ , I like Grunt, but you’re the best.”

“I’m so glad I beat out the baby pyjack.”

“He’s not a pyjack. He’s a krogan.”

“Points for species identification,” Wrex said, and then suddenly she was being deposited on a bed in a dimly-lit room. Wrex stepped back, a looming shadow backlit by the light from the hallway. “Now _go to sleep_.”

She thought about telling him that there was no need to be sarcastic. She thought about attempting to impress on him that he really was her favorite krogan, of all time. She thought about asking him if she really was his favorite quarian too, like he’d said. But before she could decide whether to do any of those things, she fell asleep.

* * *

The rubble of London was astonishing. Though her mask protected her from it, Tali could see the dust choking the air, turning the sun to a ball of fire. The rebuilding here would be an incredible undertaking, if they—

No, when. _When_ they defeated the Reapers. And they could rebuild, you could always rebuild, you just had to hold out long enough to get the chance.

Which she knew, and which Wrex knew—both of them had lost a homeworld in one way or another. Wrex, speaking of, was breaking away from a squadron of young krogans as they trotted off to follow his orders.

Wrex fell into step with her without a word. 

“Hello, Wrex.”

He nodded. “You holding up?”

She smiled faintly. Maybe he always _would_ check in on her, one way or another. Maybe that was okay. “I’m all right. Your troops?”

“Doing what they do best.” His mouth twitched. “Where are you headed?”

“Shepard has Ashley and Garrus going with her to the Beacon. She asked me to stay behind and work with the geth troopers to hold the barricades to the west.” Tali sighed. “And if you’d told me I’d be working with the geth troopers on _anything_ two years ago, I would’ve told you you were an idiot.”

“Amazing how things have changed.”

“Yeah.” She hesitated, fiddling with the clasp of her belt. “Wrex, I just wanted to say, in case I don’t—you know, don’t see you again—”

But he held up a hand to stop her. “I don’t know about you, but I’m planning to make it out of this alive. I’ve got children to sire back on Tuchanka.”

Tali smiled. “I just wanted to say… thanks.”

He gave her one of his sidelong looks, ruddy in the dust-shrouded air. “Yeah. Tali, it’s been… good getting to see you grow up.”

Her smile widened. “Same to you, Wrex.”

He laughed, loud. “I guess I was asking for that.” His hand landed, brief and warm, on her shoulder. “You show ‘em what a quarian can do.”

“I will,” she said.

* * *

Baby krogans were surprisingly dense for their size. Tali had one on her lap, one clinging to her leg, and one climbing her arm, and she was glad she didn’t have to go anywhere because she wasn’t sure she could move even if she wanted to.

Still, they were _darling_ , with their buttery skin and enormous eyes and their bodies so pudgy they were nearly spherical _._ “I see you’ve been busy,” she said, stroking the rough-smooth headscales of the one on her lap. The baby on her arm climbed a little higher—then lassoed its arm around her neck for a better grip and cut off her airflow.

“Mordin, no strangling our guest,” Wrex said, gently removing the infant. Tali drew a deep, grateful breath. Wrex smirked a little. “We’re making up for lost time.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Wrex,” Bakara said from behind him, detaching the baby trying to climb Tali’s leg and settling him on her hump.

Wrex waved his hand. “How about you, Tali? Any children on the way?”

She snorted. “Don’t rush me.”

“You’ve got a planet now, though, I’m sure you want to fill it up.”

The baby on her lap (whose name—she had been told—was Shepard) squirmed and squawked. Tali scratched between its fragmented head-plates, bumped her faceplate against its nose until it gurgled with laughter and batted at her hands. “I’ve got time,” she said, softly.

“Yeah,” Wrex said, settling Mordin’s namesake on his lap. “I guess we all do.”


End file.
